Birth Control

These days, mentioning birth control and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the same sentence will likely draw some strong reactions. But a recent contractor inquiry by HHS for its National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, Maryland adds a new wrinkle. This time, the focus is on deer.

The NIH site in Maryland is a 500-acre research facility, fully enclosed with a nine-foot perimeter fence and access gates. Lately, the campus has been, relatively speaking, overrun with deer; in this case, overrun means an estimated population of thirty to forty. A YouTube video taken earlier this year on the campus near the access gates illustrates the dilemma in which NIH finds itself:

As the video shows and the documents say, "[t]he campus is densely developed with few remaining open spaces suitable as deer habitat. The property is surrounded by high density residential and commercial development." After mentioning that hunting has never been permitted on campus, the HHS document deadpans that "there are no non-human predators present that are capable of limiting a deer population," a fact for which NIH employees are no doubt grateful. So now that the deer population has reached "a level that is incompatible with some local land uses," NIH is seeking a solution and seems to have settled upon birth control: specifically, ovariectomies.

Apparently thinking long-term, NIH is not looking for a contractor simply to perform the initial work, but one that can train NIH veterinary staff to perform the operations in the future:

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of Research Services (ORS), within the Office of the Director (OD) has a requirement to provide the NIH with wildlife expertise for the control of the deer population on the Bethesda Campus. The contractor will perform ovariectomies on adult female deer, provide tagging and provide expert advice for humanely controlling the deer population. Additionally, the contractor will provide training of NIH veterinary staff in the performance of ovariectomies in deer.

The NIH plan includes using tranquilizer darts to catch an appropriate number of does to sufficiently regulate the size of the deer population. After the operations, the does will be monitored for infection and treated for pain as well before being released. And although hunting is still forbidden on campus, NIH is taking no chances. One of the requirements of the contract is that "[a]ll ovariectomized animals will be fitted with livestock ear tags labeled 'Do Not Consume.'"

Yesterday, Senator Barbara Boxer had an op-ed at the Huffington Post about, among other related issues, the nonexistant threat that women will be denied birth control to treat medical conditions as a result of the Hobby Lobby decision. I personally know someone who works for a religious organization that doesn't cover contraception, but is nonetheless on the pill for a medical condition and gets it covered.

The Obama campaign has created a series of electronic greeting card aimed at women voters. "President Obama summed up the Republican Party’s approach to women’s health when he said 'they want to take us back to the policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century,'" the Obama campaign website reads. "Send an eCard to say you won’t go back."

What do Americans think about the Obamacare contraception mandate? It depends how you ask the question. A new Quinnipiac poll shows, Politico reports, that a majority (54 percent to 38 percent) support the White House's so-called "accommodation" on the Department of Health and Human Services rule.

The Obama administration’s recent decree — that, under Obamacare, Americans would no longer be free to offer or to choose new health plans that don’t include complimentary coverage of birth control, morning-after pills and the abortion drug ella — would likely lead a great many people to switch to much costlier birth control, according to a new piece published by Kaiser Health News.

The Washington Post reports that, under President Obama and his Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the Food and Drug Administration is considering letting “anyone of any age buy the controversial morning-after pill Plan B directly off drugstore and supermarket shelves without a prescription.”

While most Americans were fixated on the debt ceiling debate, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took the opportunity on Monday to decree that, under Obamacare, all Americans will hereby be required to pay for other people’s birth control pills and morning-after pills — including a morning-after pill that is a close cousin of the abortion pill, RU-486. Insurers will be banned from charging recipients any co-pays, co-insurance charges, or deductibles for such pills, and the citizenry as a whole will therefore share the costs.

Planned Parenthood hopes to get "no-cost birth control in the bill."

As further evidence of how politicized health care would become under Obamacare, Politico reports that Planned Parenthood is pushing for a national mandate that insurers must provide free birth control.